Detectives thought the mysterious jewelry found at the scene of the crime was an important clue, but it was. The criminal planted drugs in his enemy’s car as a red herring to lead the police away from him. However, this is inaccurate, as the story came from a mistranslation of instructions for training the horses used by hunting parties, not dogs. Mystery writers often use a red herring to mislead the reader into believing something is important that has nothing to do with the story.
A common explanation is a technique used to train hunting dogs in which a kipper, or smoked herring, was used to lead the dogs by scent. The origin of the term "red herring" has been disputed.
For example, an argument against raising salaries might go something like this: "We can't raise salaries, but we still provide great benefits for our employees." This argument is a red herring because the mention of employee benefits distracts from the real point, that salaries will not be raised. Today, the literary and rhetorical device called a red herring refers to distracting a reader or listener with a seemingly (but not actually) relevant argument. In business terms, a red herring is more likely to refer to an argument for or against a certain path of action. For example, in a mystery novel, a suspicious character may be presented as a red herring to make the reader believe that he or she committed the crime, when the character is actually meant to distract the reader from evidence against the true culprit. This may be done intentionally or unintentionally.Ī red herring is often used in movies, television and literature.
A red herring is a logical fallacy in which irrelevant information is presented alongside relevant information, distracting attention from that relevant information.
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